When Leadership Controls The Narrative

Dear Members of the Board of Trustees and the WVC Community,

I quit my tenured professorship at UW to come to WVC for the opportunity to work with amazing colleagues.  The faculty and staff at WVC are incredible.  And then, I had the opportunity to teach a class and in the almost 40 years I have been in education from high school to community college to 4-year universities, I have never had a class of students who worked that hard and were so engaged in a tough topic like statistics.  It was one of the privileges of my career to teach them. 

Unfortunately, things changed and a little over a year later, I quit my job as the person in charge of Institutional Research and Effectiveness.  I was frustrated with the inertia at the top and inability to move forward on anything without months of run around where the leadership wanted to control the narrative and I was repeatedly told that it wasn't my job to decide when to release data which was actually EXACTLY my job. My position had just enough power to feel like it was doing something but not enough to actually push it through to the finish line.  The top tier of leadership (president, VPs and Chief of Staff) were a detriment to my being able to do my job. That combined with continually hearing that I needed to "stay in my lane" sucked all the innovation, creativity, and joy out of my job. WVC can't move things forward with the same stuck mentality that has been keeping it in its state of inertia.  

It isn't that the leadership is bad, it is that they want to control the narrative of what is happening. The people that control the narrative control the perceived "truth". Unfortunately, that narrative isn't serving them well, yet they refuse to see it.  I believe it is because their concern is not the college, their concern is solely in keeping their jobs even if that means promoting a narrative that is incomplete or even untruthful.  Underneath the top tier of leadership is an amazing group of leaders who are innovative, engaged, willing to move on creative ideas and who are some of the highest caliber people I have ever worked with in my career. The top tier, if they aren't going to be removed from their jobs for their ineffectiveness, need to get out the way and allow the people that are actually doing things to do them. And they need to do it without taking months to give permission to act or to say things like "stay in your lane" rather than collaborating with others on creative ideas. 

In my leadership, I have always believed that secrets only have power when they are kept secret.  I would call on the leadership to just tell it like it is.  WVC has made some critical mistakes.   WVC is up for accreditation yet have repeatedly lied or withheld information from the NWCCU over multiple years.  There have been people under progress improvement plans (PIPs) for years who have made no progress in improving but still retain their positions of power.  Stop all of that.  Be upfront, honest, allow people to do their jobs, and move the college forward.  The community and the students deserve for the leadership to live and exemplify the values and mission of the college. 

A Former Employee of WVC